Simona Prives: towards the noise of dark waters at PRACTICE

Photo Story

Simona Prives, installation view

Simona Prives’s latest installation at Philadelphia’s PRACTICE Gallery, towards the noise of dark waters, combines projection and collage to explore themes of renewal and decay. This site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist features life-sized projections of collages built upon densely packed drawings, ink paintings, and various printmaking techniques. These collages suggest maps, geological patterns, and industrial imagery, creating abstract yet recognizable worlds.

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Swoon – Hushed and Big Voices

In Dialogue

 All images courtesy of Tod Seelie.
Swoon, Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea, photo courtesy of Tod Seelie

Brooklyn-based artist Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is celebrated internationally as one of the first female street artists in a male-dominated field. For over two decades, Swoon has explored human experiences through public art, museum exhibitions, and film. Her latest projects look at the ties between trauma and addiction, inspired by her own life in a family affected by opioid addiction. She works closely with communities, using art to show empathy and help people heal. Over the last ten years, Swoon has led important projects in places like Braddock and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, New Orleans in Louisiana, Venice, and Komye in Haiti, tackling everything from natural disasters to the opioid crisis.

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Non-Profits Shine at The Outsider Art Fair

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From Creative Growth, Oakland, CA.

This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the Outsider Art Fair, which debuted in NYC in 1993 at The Puck Building. Now housed at The Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea, it has come roaring back after a few quiet pandemic years.

Out of the sixty-four galleries exhibiting thirteen were representing non-profit organizations that work with developmentally challenged populations. For me these were the most exciting booths at the fair. The non-profits bring work that is consistently fresh and exciting. This year’s fair included organizations from Germany, Portland Oregon and Chicago that I had not seen in previous years. Several showed work among the most surprising and compelling at the Fair.

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Susan Rostow: Biomorphic Figurations



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Susan Rostow in her studio, Brooklyn, New York, photo courtesy of Carole d’Inverno

Susan Rostow’s sculptures resemble archeological artifacts with biomorphic characteristics, inviting us to probe into their origin, meaning and what they are made of. Textures of abrasive material such as clay and moss-like surface, along with graphic symbols such as linear markings of shore tides and other signifiers from old maps, fuse into hybrid forms where the lines between past and future, what is natural and what is fabricated, are seamlessly blurred.

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Chalet Comellas-Baker: Interrogating the Performance of Identity

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Secrets between (Wo)Men & Nature, single channel video, 2021

Chalet Comellas-Baker uses video, sound, installation, and print to interrogate memory, environment, and place. The Nashville-based artist is inspired by her Spanish, Cuban and American roots and often references Latin American diasporic histories through her personal lens of assimilation. As the co-owner of Unrequited Leisure, she brings a new dynamic of screen-based artwork with critical and topical investigations into Nashville’s growing art scene.

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Beatrice Scaccia: My Hope Chest at Katonah Museum of Art

In Dialogue with Beatrice Scaccia


Beatrice Scaccia at the KMA, in the spot Gallery with the install of My Hope Chest. Courtesy of Ellen Rachlin. The animation was realized also thank to the Queens Arts Fund Grant.

Beatrice Scaccia’s solo show at The Katonah Museum of Art includes a stop-motion animation and site-specific wall drawings, altogether exploring the links and tensions between tradition and modernity. This body of work by the Italian born and NYC based multi-disciplinary artist has developed based on a furniture item with layered connotations – Hope chests were (and are) used by young women to collect items in anticipation of married life. The show runs through June 27, 2021

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Laurie O’Brien – Peephole Cinema in Brooklyn, a Path towards Generosity

Martina Menegon, Splits Are Parted, Film Still, 2016, photo courtesy of the artist

Laurie O’Brien is a visual artist, teacher, and culture maker. She has just launched in Bushwick her Peephole cinema project , a free public cinema showing short, experimental silent films 24/7, through a dime-sized peephole.  In this interview with Art Spiel O’Brien talks about her experience as an artist and educator, her love of animation, and the story behind her project. Continue reading “Laurie O’Brien – Peephole Cinema in Brooklyn, a Path towards Generosity”